cides on a lock canal, instead of
a sea-level canal as originally planned.

1905--John F. Stevens succeeds Mr. Wallace as chief engineer.

1906--The foreign members of an International Board of Consulting
Engineers which visits the canal at the invitation of the United States
report in favor of a sea-level canal; American members, in the
minority, report in favor of the lock canal.

1906--In his message to Congress President Roosevelt supports the
minority report favoring the lock canal. Congress adopts the minority
report.

1907--Engineer Stevens resigns. The canal work is placed under the
direction of the War Department. Lieutenant-Colonel George W.
Goethals, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., is made engineer-in-chief. He
estimates the cost of a lock canal at $375,000,000; of a sea-level
canal, $563,000,000.

1913--October 10 (the anniversary of the day upon which Balboa took
possession of the Pacific Ocean) the Gamboa dike, marking the division
between the canal waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific, is blown open
when President Wilson presses an electric button at the White House.
This year a mud scow passes through the canal from the Atlantic to the
Pacific.

1914--January 7, the steam crane boat Alexander la Valley, 1200 tons,
makes the passage--the first vessel by steam. February 1 the ocean tug
Reliance, Captain R. C. Thompson, having steamed around the Horn
returns to the Atlantic through the canal--the first commercial vessel
to pass.

1914--The annual report of Colonel Goethals states that the cost of
constructing the canal to date, has been $353,559,049, including
fortifications.

1915--The great canal is formally opened. Including the $40,000,000
paid to France, and the $10,000,000 paid to the Republic of Panama, the
outlay represented by the canal as built by the United States totals
about $400,000,000, of which not a cent was misused.

GOLD SEEKERS OF '49

I

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

Charley Adams was trudging up to his knees in snow, on his way home
from down town. It was Washington's Birthday, 1849, and winter had
sent St. Louis a late valentine in shape of a big snowstorm. As this
occurred seventy-five years ago, there were no street-cars in St. Louis
(or in any other American city, for that matter); and even had there
been street-cars they doubtless would have been tied up. At all
events, Charley had walked down, and now he was trudging back with the
mail.

His father